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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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I am at the edge of things.
You know that place
when there are too many carnivorous dinosaurs
walking across the road
and all you’ve got is a little red scooter
to scoot you across the land
but it never goes fast enough.
I can’t tell if their teeth are pure gold or stinky white.
It does not matter.
Either way they are coming for me.
Or, am I just going mad?
My little red scooter and I
pull into a 7-Eleven to hide,
suck down a blue Slushie
but nothing tastes right.
If I were a little kid the dinosaurs would be real.
Of course, they are the dinosaurs in my mind.
In the parking lot at the edge of things
my lips and tongue get blue
and I wag them at the edge of things,
scream little words at the edge of things to shoo it back—
tungsten, I say, and gotcha—
but I’ve got nothing that the world can’t give me back 2 times.
At the edge of things,
in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven,
I imagine the seat of my scooter as a Wurlitzer.
I try to play the funk but Bernie Worrell is dead
and for that matter so am I.
That’s not fair to say to the dead people
because my Slushie goes down smooth and cool and gives me a charge.
So, I imagine my scooter as a king sized bed
and lay down in it until the cops come.
They want to taze me for vagrancy
but I won’t let the color of my eyes get their trigger finger happy.
I don’t care what the color your eyes are
it’s the whole world’s problem at the edge of things.
When I look in the rearview mirror my scooter laughs at me,
not because I am fat or short
but because it knows something I don’t.
The dinos are real, their teeth are stinky white
and it’s not me they are after.